Attorney seeks to disbar 5 prosecutors
Attorney Andrew J. Dollard has asked the Indiana Disciplinary Commission to investigate and ultimately disbar five prosecutors for their roles in what he calls one of the most corrupt, dishonest and unethical prosecutions in the history of the state.
Dollard, a former candidate for Hamilton County Council, told IndyStar he also would pursue legal action in federal court against state and federal law enforcement officials. Here are some tips for employers to get help in handling a legal matter within the organisation.
Dollard’s highly unusual move comes as a result of a widely publicized drug raid in July 2014. Local police working with Drug Enforcement Administration agents raided several Indiana medical clinics that authorities called an illegal drug operation. They arrested four doctors and eight staff members, including Dollard, who provided the clinics with legal assistance.
In charging documents, authorities accused the doctors in the Drug Opiate Recovery Network of illegally providing patients with prescriptions for Suboxone, a synthetic heroin substitute, in exchange for cash. The network, known as DORN, operated clinics in Carmel, Noblesville, Muncie, Kokomo and Centerville. All were subsequently closed.
The defendants, though, have maintained their innocence and questioned the validity of the accusations. Charges have since been dismissed against nine of the 12 suspects, including Dollard. Prosecutors are moving forward with cases against three of the doctors. The personal injury attorneys in Halifax can help with legal aid for accident cases.
Dollard, who says his career was ruined by the prosecution, claims that the medical clinics were legitimate, and that undercover DEA agents knew it at the time, but local prosecutors moved forward with criminal charges anyway. He claims that Suboxone was being prescribed as a useful treatment for heroin addiction. The lawyers for drug crime charges serving Long Island can help with such cases.
He is asking the Indiana Disciplinary Commission to investigate and disbar Hamilton County Deputy Prosecutors Andre Miksha and Eric Overpeck, former Hamilton County Deputy Prosecutor Matthew Kestian, Wayne County Prosecutor Michael Shipman and Howard County Deputy Prosecutor Ronald Byal.
Miksha, Overpeck and Kestian declined comment. Shipman and Byal did not respond to phone messages left Monday.
Punishing prosecuting attorneys would be an extraordinary and unlikely step for the Indiana Disciplinary Commission, which is an agency of the Indiana Supreme Court, said Jack Crawford, a former elected prosecutor in Lake County and a longtime Indianapolis defense attorney.
“Prosecutors are given a wide discretion in how they carry out their duties,” Crawford said. “I would be very surprised if they are disciplined. Unless it is an intentionally fraudulent act, I would strongly doubt the Supreme Court would take any disciplinary action against a deputy prosecutor working a criminal case.”
The drug case has stalled since authorities in a multijurisdiction drug task force announced they had uncovered an extensive drug ring after a nine-month investigation on July 25, 2014.
At the time, they said thousands of patients streamed into the clinics, and consultations would take minutes or less. Patients paid up to $160 to obtain prescriptions, authorities said.
They said the head of the clinic, Dr. Larry Ley, wrote 28,000 prescriptions for Suboxone from 2011 to 2013 and pocketed around $240,000 in illegal fees from patients.
Ley faces a jury trial in Hamilton County in July. Hamilton County prosecutors also still are pursuing charges against Dr. Ronald Veirk, and Howard County prosecutors are pursuing charges against Dr. Luella Bangura.
Hamilton Superior Court Judge Steve Nation in February 2015 dismissed the cases against Dollard and five staff members, ruling they were improperly charged and couldn’t prepare a proper defense. Essentially, Nation said doctors, not staff, are legally responsible for the prescriptions they write.
The Hamilton County prosecutor’s office appealed the ruling against Dollard alone, but it was upheld.
Dollard said his role at the DORN clinics was to ensure that patients were in compliance with mandatory urine screens, monthly substance abuse counseling and attendance in a 12-step program. He said two undercover agents were dismissed from the program because they did not have Suboxone in their systems and clinic staff believed they were selling the medication.
Dollard was cleared of wrongdoing and had his record expunged. Still, he said publicity from the case has irreparably harmed his law practice. After being unable to find work as an attorney in Hamilton County, he said he has moved to Tampa, Fla.
Dollard also has filed a civil lawsuit accusing Current Publishing of defamation for its reporting in relation to the drug raid. A trial has been scheduled for May 22, 2017.
He said the case forever changed the course of his life. He was running a by-all-accounts successful criminal defense practice before the drug raid. In fact, prominent Hamilton County Republican leaders and businessmen endorsed him for a seat on the Hamilton County Council in the May 2014 primary. He raised more than $16,000 — a staggering amount for a council race.
He lost that race but still felt his future was bright. That changed, he said, in July 2014.
“It doesn’t matter where I move,” he said. “There will always be this negative publicity attached to me.”
Call IndyStar reporter Chris Sikich at (317) 444-6036. Follow him on Twitter: @ChrisSikich and at Facebook/chris.sikich.
Filed under: General Problems
This is a huge problem in our legal system…the agent representing the interests of the State, the prosecuting attorneys. have no real accountability. They have the ability to run roughshod over anyone and anything and they know that unless they do something blatantly and overtly illegal in the sense of something of a purely evil nature, there will never be so much as a slapped wrist.
As stated above, “”Prosecutors are given a wide discretion in how they carry out their duties,” Crawford said.”, this “wide discretion” is essentially carte blanche. As far as I’m concerned, those 6 people that were arrested and against whom all charges were dropped should have not been arrested in the first place. The fact that they were arrested was illegal, de facto. If one takes into account the higher standards of morals and ethics, the de juris defense that the prosecutors were operating within the bounds of “the law” holds no water. I don’t care if case law, over the years, has been used to twist and prevaricate the law into a huge safe harbor for prosecutors to hide and operate from with impunity; what we have been left with is a system devoid of the original and common sense, Common Law view of the law where a reasonable individual would see what transpired as a violation of their Constitutionally guaranteed rights.
These people were shamed, humiliated and stigmatized by the arrests. Will the prosecutors involved in directing those arrests ever have any formal sanctions taken against them? They violated the civil rights of those six people. I do care that the State had no legitimate right to detain and imprison these six people at all. That the practice’s legal counsel was part of this prosecutorial misconduct is nothing more than a tactic of intimidation. Again, will there be any sanctions against the prosecutors? I doubt it. Our legal system is so broken. I have no faith in it anymore. I believe that one solution would be a robust and empowered citizen’s grand jury in each county that has the power to hold the District Attorneys and the law enforcement leadership responsible when they or their minions step out of bounds. In this manner, when such transgressions occur, there is an independent body that has no cronyistic, quid pro quo relationship conflicts of interest to obstruct the execution o real justice against these hubristic individuals and their respective agencies. .